After Mass Knife Attack in Japan, Disabled Victims Are Still in the Shadows

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Takashi, left, and Chikiko Ono, with a photo of their son, Kazuya, at their home in Zama, Japan. Kazuya survived a knife attack at a center for mentally disabled people in July.CreditKo Sasaki for The New York Times

ZAMA, Japan — A vicious knife attack killed his roommate at a facility for the developmentally disabled in July, but Kazuya Ono does not know that.

Mr. Ono, 43, survived slashes to his throat and stomach by the attacker, a former caregiver at the group home, and remains in a hospital nearby.

When he is agitated, he scratches himself so vigorously that he leaves marks on his face and arms. He shouts “blood, blood, blood!” at his nurses. He refuses to eat the hospital food, so his parents, Takashi and Chikiko Ono, bring Kazuya’s favorite curry and grapes for lunch.

The Onos, who live here in Zama, a suburb of Yokohama, want the world to know more about their cherished son, who is autistic and has the mental capacity of a toddler. He is one of 26 survivors of the knife attacks that left 19 dead in Sagamihara, a mountain town outside Tokyo. The assailant reportedly told the police that he wanted to “eliminate the disabled from the world.”

He may have accomplished that in more ways than he intended. The victims of the worst mass killing in Japan since World War II have also been eliminated from the public imagination. People do not even know their names, let alone the details of their lives.

The police in Kanagawa Prefecture have declined to release the identities of the victims, citing the families’ desire for privacy, in a decision that is increasingly drawing criticism around Japan.

Advocates for disabled people say withholding the names is consistent with a culture that considers them lesser beings. Keeping the victims hidden, even after their deaths, these advocates say, tacitly endorses the views of those — including the assailant — who say disabled people should be kept separate from the rest of society.

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A photograph of Kazuya Ono from a family album.CreditKo Sasaki for The New York Times

Mr. Ono, who wishes the families would insist on releasing the names, put it bluntly: “I want to create a world in which people are not ashamed of their disabled family members.”

Osamu Nagase, a visiting professor of disability studies at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, said the public was implicitly approving the attacker’s perception that the victims “didn’t deserve life.” He added: “If we want to pay respect to those 19 victims, they cannot remain nameless. They cannot remain faceless.”

Such nondisclosure is unusual. In other rare instances of mass killings in Japan, like the stabbings of five elderly victims on Awaji Island, south of Kobe, last year, or a knifing attack in 2008 that left seven dead in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, the police identified the victims within days.

Indeed, across the globe, the naming of victims is seen as a way to honor them and the losses suffered by their families. As details about individual victims are revealed, the public is reminded of the humanity that has been brutally taken away.

Yet in the case of the Sagamihara killings, the police said the families themselves had requested anonymity, specifically because the victims were disabled. Some, fearful of the stigma, had not even told relatives, friends or co-workers that their sons or daughters resided at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, the center where the attack took place.

In Japan, the decision to withhold the names has been condemned by a number of disability rights groups, as well as many newspapers. “The families’ feelings should be respected,” an editorial in Tokyo Shimbun read, “but we need to know their names and keep the memories of how they lived and lost their lives.”

Seiko Noda, a member of the House of Representatives and the mother of a disabled son, told another paper, Mainichi Shimbun, that withholding the names of the victims “denies their entire lives.”

The Japanese news media, for its part, has extensively covered Satoshi Uematsu, 26, the attacker. Mr. Uematsu, who resigned from Yamayuri-en in February and spent a few weeks in a psychiatric hospital, went on a rampage in the middle of the night, breaking into the center and methodically going from room to room, slashing the throats of residents as they slept.

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Investigators after the mass killing at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a residential care center for disabled people in Sagamihara, Japan.CreditEugene Hoshiko/Associated Press

Chillingly, he had sent a letter to a politician five months earlier, urging euthanasia for severely disabled people and outlining his precise plans to kill them “for the sake of Japan.” In a grim irony, Mr. Uematsu is most likely disabled in his own way. According to Japanese news reports, doctors at the psychiatric hospital issued a diagnosis of delusional disorder but then released him after concluding that he was not a threat to others.

Advocates for disabled people say Mr. Uematsu’s views represent the extreme end of a continuum of discrimination in which those with disabilities are often spurned by a culture that prizes conformity.

“The nail that stands out gets hammered down,” said Michael Gillan Peckitt, a part-time lecturer in philosophy at Osaka University who has cerebral palsy. “If you’re physically disabled or have intellectual disabilities,” he added, “you’re kind of a nuisance that way.”

The intellectually disabled, who include those with Down syndrome as well as some forms of autism, are particularly isolated in Japan. Until as recently as 1996, the law allowed the government to involuntarily sterilize those with such disabilities. And today, they are much more likely than those with physical disabilities to live in institutions.

According to government data, about one in six people with developmental disabilities lived in an institutional setting in 2011, the last year for which such figures are available. Among those who are physically disabled, the figure was one in 53.

“Japan has been heavily criticized in the international community for the segregation of people with disabilities,” said Kanae Doi, Japan director for Human Rights Watch, noting that the country had many large institutions like Yamayuri-en, where close to 150 residents lived full time.

Japan offers some services for the physically disabled, including elevators in train stations and chirping sounds at crosswalks and the bottom of stairs for the blind. Those who are physically disabled can also usually speak for themselves.

“In the case of the intellectually disabled, more than 90 percent of them cannot talk,” said Toru Yuki, president of the National Intellectual Disabilities Association for Parents and Families, after a visit to Yamayuri-en. “They need someone else, their parents or their caretakers, who they can trust and we should be advocates on their behalf.” Mr. Yuki said he disapproved of the decision to keep the victims’ names from the public.

At Yamayuri-en, a makeshift memorial stands outside the entrance. There are no names or photographs, just a table covered in a white sheet where visitors lay flowers and pray for the dead.

On a recent afternoon, Risako Fushitani, 32, and her husband, Hideo, 43, came to pay their respects during a vacation from Osaka with their son, Takuro, 9, who is autistic. They placed a bouquet of chrysanthemums and set two cans of mandarin oranges and jellied almond milk on the table.

“I would want to disclose my son’s name,” Ms. Fushitani said, her eyes filling with tears as she gazed at Takuro. “But if I think of how my relatives would react, I can kind of understand how the victims’ families are feeling.”

Takashi Ono, who is Kazuya’s stepfather, said he also sympathized with the families reluctant to submit to scrutiny by the news media. Still, he said, he worried that they were motivated more by a fear of disgrace than privacy.

At the hospital, Mr. and Ms. Ono have placed a stuffed version of Doraemon, a popular cartoon robot cat, on a side table in Kazuya’s room. Sometimes Kazuya takes off the helmet he wears to protect himself from injuries and rests it on the stuffed animal’s head.

Sitting on a wine-colored sofa in a tiny living room, Ms. Ono flipped through a photo album, pointing out pictures of Kazuya at the beach, at summer festivals and swimming in a pool. “You have to spend so many years to teach him one thing,” Ms. Ono mused. “But whenever he mastered something, what great joy he gave me.”

She recalled taking walks with him and bringing him to the dry cleaner she ran with Mr. Ono. “There is no need to hide him,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: After Mass Knife Attack in Japan, Disabled Victims Remain in the Shadows. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe